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January 31, 2008

Happiness is U shaped; it peaks at 20 and 70, but slumps in the middle; resumes at fifty 08-037

It's official: happiness resumes at 50

Stephen Moss Wednein The Guardian writes:

'The first 40 years of life is text, the rest is commentary," wrote Schopenhauer. Setting the watershed as low as 40 is arguable, but Schopenhauer surely had a point, and it may help to explain the results of a new survey that puts our most depressed age at 44. This vast study, carried out jointly by researchers at Warwick University and Dartmouth College in the US, has concluded that happiness is U-shaped: it peaks when we are 20 and 70, but slumps in the middle. "You would expect people to get unhappier as they get closer to death," says Professor Andrew Oswald of Warwick University, "but the opposite appears to be the case. It is a mystery why this happens."